While I completely agree that waste is inexcusable and helium is really important there are many grades of helium and they are basically all industrial biproducts. The stuff at parties is mostly air and unsuitable for most scientific applications (checking leaks with a mass spec in a vacuum system is one of the few). Even the high grade welding/scientific stuff is little more than a biproduct of natural gas extraction. The value of helium recovered from a well is essentially nil compared to the natural gas, so it’s conservation is not really possible since there is no real market force regulating supply (we would basically need to restrict natural gas consumption to nil, which is a good idea long term but not really feasible for civilization at the current stage.